Restaurateur Turns North Korean Recipe Into Hot Ticket in Seoul : Melting a Cold War with Cold Noodles

North Korea has softened its enemies in the South using a weapon that no one could have imagined during the long years of North-South confrontation — cold noodles, Pyongyang-style.

The North Koreans are shipping buckwheat, bean paste and liquor here to satiate the appetites of South Koreans yearning for a taste of life above the Demilitarized Zone that still divides the Korean Peninsula. The food is arriving here at a time when millions of North Koreans survive on tree bark and the husks of corn kernels and the country is getting millions of tons of emergency food aid from abroad.

The buyer is an unabashedly capitalist entrepreneur whose Okryukwan Restaurant takes its ingredients, cuisine — and name — from the original restaurant founded on orders from the late North Korean leader, Kim Il Sung, in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang.

"We're getting 10 tons of buckwheat a month for noodles," said the owner, Kim Young Baek, who sees the venture as a marriage between his own capitalist drive to open up North Korea and North Korea's need for hard cash. "We don't think about politics."

That is all in accordance with the "sunshine policy" promoted by President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea to reduce border tensions after years in which South Korea's national security law forbade the least sign of Pyongyang influence in Seoul.

These days, bags shipped from the North Korean port of Nampo to the South Korean port of Inchon litter the office of the Okryukwan. Their labels clearly say "DPR Korea" for Democratic People's Republic of Korea, a name banned in Seoul in print until a year or so ago.

The original Okryukwan in Pyongyang used to dish up 10,000 daily servings, but now serves just occasional foreign visitors and VIPs, Mr. Kim said. His own Okryukwan, meanwhile, can hardly cope with the crowds lined up at the door.

Customers try not to think of the horrors of the Korean War or the current suffering of starving North Koreans as they wait happily for a table.

"I feel sorry for the North Koreans, but what can you do?" asked Eum Seong Jin, a university student, standing in line with a couple of friends.

Beside him, Shin Hyun Joo, working for an American company, contrasted her response to the North with that of her parents.

"Our parents' generation went through the Korean War," she said. "Many left families behind in the North. They have strong feelings. We don't have those feelings. It's like it's a different country."

Inside, all 360 seats on three floors were filled with diners tucking in on the famous cold noodles.

"What makes this place special is we know the recipe is straight from Pyongyang," said Kim Ok Ja, visiting the restaurant with her husband. "The flavoring is different."

That is the result of the culinary skills of two employees: a chef who holds a Japanese passport and was trained at the Okryukwan in Pyongyang, and a defector who once worked at another restaurant in North Korea.

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To further guarantee authenticity, he has purchased hundreds of chopsticks, ceramic spoons, plates and bowls from the North, all displaying the label of the Okryukwan Restaurant. Some of them bear the initials "DPRK" on the bottom.

Mr. Kim, who has been importing metal products from the North for eight years, sees the restaurant as setting three precedents:

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"Since 1991, when there was the first economic cooperation between North and South, all the business was in the North," he said. "This is the first such business in the South.

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"Until now all economic transactions between North and South were based on crops and raw materials," he said. Now Koreans "can feel real cooperation since this is a service sector."

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Pyongyang, he added, "is going to register the name of Okryukwan in the South," and the South Korean government has promised to accept it. "That means, if a South Korean company wants to sell anything in the North, North Korea will register its brand as well."

Those attributes help account for the restaurant's popularity among South Koreans curious about life in the North.

"It's not the food," said Park Yong Sub, an elderly man who said he had come from his home town of Hamhung in North Korea shortly before the Korea War. "It's the idea of a taste from home."

The restaurant's popularity has surged so fast that Mr. Kim hopes to open another 10 just like it.

He has the permission of the South Korean government, eager to push reconciliation with the North, as well as the cooperation of North Korean authorities, eager to export their products.

The question, however, is how long supplies can last.

"Because of the food shortage problem in the North, we anticipate that the supply will not be stable," said Mr. Kim, who has asked for three shipments of buckwheat a month as well as a ton a month of mung bean, used in Pyongyang-style pancakes.

He talks every day to representatives of a trading company in North Korea, patching calls through Tokyo. A Korean-Japanese company handles the paperwork for shipments that Pyongyang still does not want to recognize as moving directly to South Korea.

"I'm not sure where they get the buckwheat and the mung bean," Mr. Kim said, but he believes the North Koreans buy it on a free market that has grown as government agencies break down.

In the meantime, Okryukwan attempts to live up to the reputation of its namesake in Pyongyang. A painting of the original Okryukwan, made by a North Korean artist, adorns the outside wall.

There are no signs, however, of Kim Il Sung, the long-time North Korean leader who ordered the establishment of the Okryukwan in the early 1960s, or his son and heir, Kim Jong Il. "We are completely non-political," Mr. Kim, the restaurant owner, emphasized.

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